N.j. School Facing Controversy Over Aids Victim

September 22, 1985|by RON DEVLIN, The Morning Call

There could hardly be a more unlikely place to confront the agonizing issue of AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) than Washington, N.J.

With its quiet residential streets and business district of 19th-century brick buildings, the Warren County town exhibits the kind of rural wholesomeness that seems endemic to a community surrounded by fertile cornfields and stone farmhouses and named after the first president of the United States.

It's not the kind of place you expect to find a virus - or even traces of it - so invasive, so deadly, that it can wipe out the body's ability to fight off disease.

But when the New Jersey Health Department makes its decision Tuesday on whether a 5-year-old girl with AIDS-related complex (ARC) and her healthy 9- year-old brother can attend the borough schools, the rural community of 3,500 persons will find itself confronted with perhaps the most controversial medical-ethical issue of the times.

And if, as seems likely, the state orders the Washington School District to admit the children, the town could be in for a long, perhaps divisive debate over how to balance a child's right to an education with a community's need to protect itself from a potentially communicable disease - an almost always fatal one at that.

With so little known about AIDS and so few cases of it occurring in children, other New Jersey communities and, indeed, towns and cities across the country will be watching to see how the people of a small town in western New Jersey react to what is rapidly becoming a major social, as well as medical, issue.

Maureen Sczpanski, spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Education, said there is only one other case in the state, that of an AIDS-stricken 4- year-old Plainfield child denied admission to kindergarten.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health said there are no cases of children with AIDS having been denied admission to Pennsylvania schools.

Leigh Cook, New Jersey Health Department spokeswoman, said the department's Medical Advisory Board will rule on three cases when it meets Tuesday. She said the panel, whose decision will be final, consists of a health department physician, a pediatrician who has treated children with AIDS, another pediatrician and a child psychologist.

Cook explained that the department's policy, patterned after one developed for the federal government by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Atlanta, is to admit children with AIDS, ARC or evidence of exposure to the HTLV-III virus to school, unless they are unable to control bladder functions or drooling, are not toilet-trained or are unusually aggressive and likely to bite another child.

She said the advisory board's decision will be relayed to the education department, which has indicated it will use it as a basis for formulating its own policy on the matter.

Patrick O'Malley, superintendent of elementary schools in Washington, was unavailable for comment on what, if anything, the district will do if ordered to admit the children.

School officials have indicated they will fight any move by the state to force the Washington schools to admit the children.

Gary Masenoir, a member of the Washington Board of Education, conceded there is a possibility the district would go to court to obtain an injunction barring a health department order to admit the children.

"No matter what happens, it's going to be a long road for us," he predicted.

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It all started in late July when a Washington woman went to register her foster child, a 5-year-old girl whose natural mother died from AIDS, for kindergarten in the Washington Memorial Elementary School, a modern, one-story complex in a residential area on the western edge of town.

The identities of the foster parents and the children have not been revealed, but Howard A. McGinn, the family's attorney, said the woman informed the school that the child's natural mother died of AIDS and that ARC, a condition that often leads to AIDS, had been diagnosed in the child.

On the advice of the school physician, the child was denied admission to the kindergarten program. And pending the outcome of blood tests, the district also refused to admit her 9-year-old brother to fourth grade.

McGinn said that the school district was given blood samples from both children several weeks ago, but has not yet contacted the family about the outcome.

Dr. James Oleske, who has been treating the girl for about eight months and has examined her brother, said neither child is a threat to other children in a school setting. He said both children should be allowed to attend school.

"The boy is perfectly healthy," said Oleske, an associate professor at the New Jersey School of Medicine, Newark.

Oleske, a specialist in pediatric immunology who has treated 56 children with AIDS at Children's Hospital, Newark, emphasized that the girl does not have AIDS.